“No changes regarding Macedonian Church”

12/8/2010

BELGRADE — Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Irinej on Wednesday denied any changes in attitude regarding the canonically unrecognized Macedonian Orthodox Church (MPC).

“No negotiations on reconciliation have taken place, and if we had been lucky, the situation such as it has been for a number of years should not have been caused at all,” the Patriarch told Tanjug.

Patriarch Irinej also said that Belgrade lawyer Toma Fila, who together with Macedonian ambassador to Belgrade Ljubisa Georgievski visited the Patriarchate in Belgrade, is not his adviser, as he was presented by the media from Skopje.

On the occasion, a discussion was led in which the relations between the two churches were not addressed at all, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) said.

Fila, whom Macedonian media called an advisor to SPC Patriarch Irinej, recently told the country’s national TV broadcaster, the Skopje-based Kanal 5, that negotiations are the only way the two churches can solve their decades-long dispute.

The canonically unrecognized MPC split from SPC in 1967, and proclaimed itself autocephalous, but has not yet been recognized by any local Orthodox Church.

SPC has for years been trying to resolve the issue of schism with dioceses in the Republic of Macedonia. A number of meetings were held with representatives of the seceded dioceses, and the meetings helped reach an agreement on overcoming the schism in Niš, on May 17, 2002.

Authorized MPC representatives have put their signatures on the agreement, “but later on, under pressure from the local authorities, they called it off”, reports Tanjug.

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